


Falling Victim to Your Fantasy

by lucernis, scriptophobia



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: (It's A Style Choice), Blood and Injury, Dialogue Heavy, Gen, Murder Mystery, Unhappy Ending, Unsympathetic Sides (Sanders Sides), the sides can Actually Die au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:08:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25854103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucernis/pseuds/lucernis, https://archiveofourown.org/users/scriptophobia/pseuds/scriptophobia
Summary: One step. Another. Then another. The creak of a floorboard and a pause, the silence giving way to the rapid beating of a heart. The silence returns, so there’s another step. Another. Then—Then.He trips on something and tumbles down the stairs, undoubtedly breaking his nose on the way down.He reaches the bottom with a loudthudand a groan.Whispers.Why are there whispers?A sharp pain through his abdomen. A whimper.A flash of gold and black, a sickening crack against his skull that echos within it too. Another whimper, somehow even quieter this time.Footsteps up the stairs, the body abandoned.A pair of eyes slip shut and the world falls away.(The time was 2:30 AM.)
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders & Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders, Anxiety | Virgil Sanders & Morality | Patton Sanders, Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders & Dark Creativity | Remus "The Duke" Sanders, Creativity | Roman "Princey" Sanders & Logic | Logan Sanders, Logic | Logan Sanders & Morality | Patton Sanders
Comments: 3
Kudos: 17





	Falling Victim to Your Fantasy

**Author's Note:**

> the fic i wrote with the incomparable lex (who contributed, by her own estimate, 1.5 Whole Scenes and the Entire Title /t) for [the fandom games](https://fandom-games.tumblr.com/info)—the backstory for which can be found [here](https://fandom-games.tumblr.com/post/626014963532726272/murder-mystery-saturday-august-7th-tonight-is-the) and [here](https://fandom-games.tumblr.com/post/626015090922209280/murder-mystery-the-suspects)
> 
> * * *
> 
> warnings if you missed the tags: major character death/murder, blood and injury, unsympathetic side(s), unhappy ending  
> (if you have Strong Feelings about specific u!side(s) and don't mind spoilers, you can find that in the end notes)

“Why didn’t you get involved in the fight?”

“I didn’t feel it was necessary. You, Patton, and Virgil already said all that I felt needed to be said.”

“We still could’ve used the back up though, Lo.”

“Maybe so, but I believe you did just fine on your own.”

“Right.”

A sigh. “If it helps, I would have been on your side.”

A scoff. “I should certainly hope so.” A pause. “You didn’t come here just to make small talk though, did you?”

“No. I came to ask if I could borrow your katana.”

“You can, but may I ask why you’d want to?” A frown.

“Research. I want to determine if it’s historically accurate when compared to actual katanas that were once used.”

“That sounds awfully dull.”

“Not to me, it isn’t.”

A laugh. “Of course it’s not. Just bring it back when you’re done, alright?”

A nod. “Naturally.”

(The time was 8:12 PM.)

* * *

“What did you do with my jacket?” The tone is accusatory, the words filled with venom.

“I haven’t been in your room in _years,_ not since—” A glare is sent his way, followed by a pause. “What makes you think _I_ would have it, anyway?”

“Who else would take it?”

A scoff. “It beats me why even _you_ want it, how am I supposed to know?”

“You’re avoiding the question!”

“And _you’re_ wasting my time. I don’t have your jacket. Goodnight, Virgil.”

“Bitch.” The word is muttered, but all hear it. 

Not one person acknowledges it.

(The time was 9:32 PM.)

* * *

A note, written in swirling script.

_Remus,_

_Meet me in the common room at 2:25 am. We have things to discuss._

_Yours, Roman_

A creaking door. A glance. Remus exits his room. Normally, secrecy isn’t his forte—mending his relationship with his brother, however, seems important enough that he has to at _least_ try.

One step. Another. Then another. The creak of a floorboard and a pause, the silence giving way to the rapid beating of a heart. The silence returns, so there’s another step. Another. Then— 

Then. 

Remus trips on something and tumbles down the stairs, undoubtedly breaking his nose on the way down. 

He reaches the bottom with a loud _thud_ and a groan. 

Whispers. _Why are there whispers?_

A sharp pain through his abdomen. A whimper. 

A flash of gold and black, a sickening crack against his skull that echos within it too. Another whimper, somehow even quieter this time.

Footsteps up the stairs, Remus abandoned. He should have screamed. Maybe if he’d screamed, someone would have cared. 

But no. He hadn’t.

He hadn’t, and so Remus’s eyes slip shut and the world falls away.

(The time was 2:30 AM.)

* * *

A knock. “Virgil? Why are you still up?”

“Insomnia? Anxiety? I’m not sure, take your pick.”

“Are you alright?”

A quiet laugh. “Never. If you’re referring to the fight—”

“I am.”

“Then yeah, I guess. It’s nothing we didn’t know before, right? We don’t like the dark sides, they don’t like us.” A shrug. “Nothing groundbreaking. I just don’t like all the yelling. Makes me feel… less than good afterward.”

A noncommittal hum, and a pair of eyes linger on a cardigan.

A sharp breath. It’s wrong.

And suddenly, “You know what, I’m kind of tired now, actually. D’you mind—”

“Oh! Oh, yeah, sure! Sleep well, Virgil.”

“Night, Pat.”

(The time was 3:03 AM.)

* * *

_This can’t be happening._

_This can’t be happening._

Roman can’t think anything else at all as he stands at the foot of the stairs, staring at the body, cold and dead in the middle of the living room. 

(He recognizes the outfit on it—how could he not, this is his _brother_ after all—but putting a name to the body makes it feel _real._ Roman doesn’t want it to be real, so the body in the middle of the living is just that. A body. He refuses to think of it as anything else.)

Taking a tentative step closer, Roman does his best to avoid the bloodstains that litter the carpet, not wanting any to get on his shoes and make the others suspect that _he_ might have ki— 

No. There’s no guarantee that he’s _actually_ dead, and while some of the other sides may not like him, there was no way they’d have _killed_ him, right?

_…Right?_

Right.

“Remus?” Roman asks, crouching by his brother’s face, still wishing, praying, hoping that this is some sort of prank, that Remus will sit up, summon his mace from god knows where and hit him over the head with it.

Remus does none of those things, and Roman does his very best not to think about that for too long.

He has to get one of the others. Or all of them, actually. There is no way he’s going to deal with this alone. 

Roman stands up, wishing he could tear his eyes away from Remus’s face, so horrifyingly empty, and his eyes, so cold and blank, and his chest, stabbed through with— 

That’s _his_ katana, isn’t it? How did it get— But no, _Roman hadn’t killed him,_ so— 

Wait. 

No, _Logan_ had been the last one to have it. That fact will alleviate any suspicion directed towards him.

So had Logan…?

No. Roman doesn’t want to believe that _Logan_ killed Remus. He refuses to.

Roman takes a calming breath, tearing his eyes away from Re— the body. He tears his eyes away from _the body._

He’d been about to step away from it too when his eyes are abruptly drawn to the left hand, clenched into a fist with a piece of paper crumpled in it. Roman kneels again, carefully prying open the fingers and extracting the paper before smoothing it out over his knee.

It’s a note.

It’s a note that requests to see Remus in the living room at 2:25 AM, presumably last night.

It’s a note that requests to see Remus in the living room at 2:25 AM _written in Roman’s handwriting._

But Roman _didn’t_ request to see Remus in the living room at 2:25 AM last night. He _didn’t_ kill Remus. He knows he didn’t, so someone else must have written it.

 _Roman_ knows that.

…But what will the _other_ sides think when they see the note?

Panicked, Roman shoves the note deep into the pocket of his pants as he stands up again. No one else can ever know about it.

(The time was 8:33 AM.)

* * *

Virgil rubs his eyes, yawning as he trudges down the stairs behind the rest of the sides. “What’s important enough that you had to wake us _all_ up, Pri—”

And suddenly, Virgil goes silent. The _room_ goes silent, everyone staring in shock at Remus’s body, at the blood pooling around him, at the limbs bent at horribly strange angles—horribly, horribly strange angles, even for him.

“We need to figure out what happened,” Patton says finally, wringing his hands nervously, eyes darting everywhere but the spot on the ground where Remus lies.

“What we _need,_ ” Janus drawls, “is to figure out _who killed my friend._ ”

Virgil scoffs. “Like it wasn’t you.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Do you have _proof?_ ”

“We don’t have proof of _anything,_ Virgil dear.”

“Boys!” Patton exclaims, a smile suddenly plastered over his face, “Now isn’t the time for arguing.”

Virgil crosses his arms with a huff, but he does go silent.

Janus, on the other hand, speaks up again. “Someone needs to investigate. Find fingerprints, weapons, create a timeline, all that. Without a legitimate detective, it has to be one of us, too.”

“Logan,” Virgil announces firmly. “I trust him to figure this out, more than I trust any of _you,_ ” he says with a glare at the rest of the room, which—while perhaps unnecessary—anyone present would also admit is entirely valid.

Logan nods in agreement. “I will do my best to get to the bottom of this.”

(The time was 8:53 AM.)

* * *

It had been a long, long day. Logan had indeed done his best to figure out what had happened, but… well, Roman doesn’t want to sound critical, but it doesn’t seem like they’d gotten all that far. The only new thing that had been discovered after Logan asked each of them for their alibis was— 

“Hey, Roman?”

“Hm?”

“You know how Janus’s cane was found under my bed?”

—the cane. 

“Yeah? What about it?”

“Well, this is going to soundweird, but I think _he_ put it there.” 

“How— how do you figure?”

“Okay, so you know that when Janus originally impersonated Patton, he wore the wrong cardigan?”

“Are you saying—”

_“Patton was wearing the wrong cardigan when he talked to me last night.”_

“But if Patton wasn’t _Patton,_ then are you implying that Logan—”

“Well, he wasn’t wearing the right tie, was he?”

_Shit._

“Shit,” Roman says, this time out loud. Out of all the people to have killed Remus, Roman had thought Janus was the one with the _least_ convincing motive. They may have been nearly opposites when it came to personality, but they’d been _friends_ at least, right? 

Sighing, Roman stands up. “I’m going to go talk to Janus. There’s got to be more to this.”

“I mean, okay, but be careful. He might—” Virgil pauses. “Actually, you know what? I’m coming with you.”

(The time was 1:17 AM.)

* * *

“Janus—”

“I didn’t kill your brother, Roman. I _swear._ ”

“Exactly what the murderer would say,” Virgil says pointedly, stepping past Roman to sit on Janus’s bed, regardless of his potential murderer status.

“And for the record,” Janus continues, spinning to Virgil, “I didn’t put the cane under your bed either. If I’d wanted to frame you, I wouldn’t have used my own cane. There are _countless_ other blunt objects to knock someone out with, I wouldn’t have risked drawing suspicion to myself by doing something so foolish and—”

“Oookay, you’ve clearly put too much thought into that,” Virgil interrupts, holding out a hand. “We were going to ask about Logan and, uh, Patton. They both talked to the two of us last night, but they were wearing their old clothes.”

“So you think that was _me?_ ”

“Neither of them mentioned the conversations in their alibis,” Roman points out.

“Look, if I _truly_ wanted to murder someone, I wouldn’t have been so careless as to wear the wrong article of clothing _again._ Surely you remember that I took _notes_ last time, Roman.”

“Well yeah, but—”

“No, I’m done here. Wait in the living room, I’ll be there in a bit with proof that it _wasn’t_ me.”

“Where are you going?” Roman asked, jumping to the side as Janus whirled out of the room, his cape fluttering behind him.

“To talk to Patton.” 

(The time was 1:28 AM.)

* * *

“Enough.” 

An innocent tilt of the head. “Enough of what?”

“Enough small talk. That’s not what I’m here for, and I’m _sure_ you know it.”

A smile fades, slowly but surely. “Do I?”

“Yes.” A pause, quite likely for dramatic effect. “You’re the one who killed Remus.”

“I—”

“Don’t try to deny it. I can tell when you’re lying.” (He can’t—not really, anyway—but _Patton_ doesn’t need to know that.)

“I—” A shuddering breath. “I did.”

A soft voice, coaxing out an explanation. “What happened?” 

“I— I did it alone. I took—”

“Lie.”

“No! I’m not, I—”

“You worked with Logan, didn’t you?”

Silence.

“I’ll take that as a yes. Please, do go on.”

“Fine. Logan borrowed the katana from Roman, I took the jacket from Virgil’s room. We wore the wrong clothes—”

“To frame me.”

“—to frame you, yes. I— It was my idea to write Remus a note and mimic Roman’s handwriting.”

A hum, followed quickly by a smirk. “He’s not going to appreciate that very much, is he?”

“He— he’ll understand, he has to! I did this for him, for Virgil—”

“I don’t need your excuses, Patton.”

A soft sigh. “Right. We—well. I, technically—slipped the note under Remus’s door, telling him to meet in the living room at two twenty-five AM. I used Virgil’s jacket to trip him, Logan used Roman’s katana to kill him, and I used your cane to knock him out. We— we used something from each of you, so you wouldn’t think you were able to trust each other.”

“And yet, you used nothing of your own and nothing of Logan’s. How careless.”

“I— well, we—”

“What did I say about excuses?” A pause, and then silence as the stammering stops. “Is that all?”

Another voice, this time from behind him. “It’s all _you’ll_ hear.”

The flash of a knife. 

A scream.

(The time was 2:21 AM.)

* * *

“It _was_ Patton,” Janus says, standing at the top of the stairs, panting and gasping. “Patton and Logan. _They_ killed Remus.”

Roman blinks. “How do you—”

“Well for _starters,_ ” Janus says, straightening up and strolling down the stairs in a rather calm manner for someone who just accused two people of murder, “Patton just confessed everything to me. I’ll spare you the details, but he and Logan did indeed kill Remus.

“Second,” Janus continues, pausing at the foot of the stairs, “Logan just tried to kill me and Patton when he heard him confessing,” he says, gesturing with a flourish at Patton and Logan, both of whom had just appeared at the top of the stairs looking unusually disheveled.

“I’d watch out for the knife,” Janus finishes, draping himself across the couch as though it were a chaise lounge.

Logan moves to push past Patton, to do… _something,_ but he’s stopped. 

“There’s nothing more we can do,” Patton says, tears in his eyes as he looks down at the betrayal in Virgil and Roman’s faces.

“So Janus wasn’t lying,” Virgil finally breathes. 

“He wasn’t, but Virgil, kiddo, let me explain. I did—”

“Nothing you say is going to fix this! You— what have you _done?_ ”

“I _helped_ Thomas! We didn’t need Remus, we never did!”

“Why would he be here if he wasn’t needed?” Roman asks quietly, hand reaching into his pocket for something Patton has a sinking feeling he won’t want to see. “I don’t care what you thought of him, he was still my brother. And I still—” Roman stops, shaking his head as he removes his hand from the pocket, a piece of paper held in it.

Patton can tell by the glare on Roman’s face that he _definitely_ doesn’t want to know what it is, and he can tell by the pained look in his eyes that he already does.

“You wrote this, didn’t you? You _used me,_ you used _my handwriting,_ you used the fact that Remus _actually cares about me_ to— to _kill him._ ” Roman covers his mouth as he chokes back a sob. “You can’t— you _have_ to know how much that hurts, how _awful_ it feels to know that in some twisted way, this is _my fault._

“And surely,” Roman continues, “surely you know by now how much I _hate—_ no. No, that’s too kind. _Surely_ you know how much I completely, utterly, and totally _despise you._ ”

Patton’s voice is small as he tries one final time, “I did this for _us._ I did this to _protect us._ Logan and I, we— we did this for you. If you just _try_ to see what we did for you, then maybe one day—not now, I don’t expect you to now, but maybe one day—you’ll be able to forgive us.”

_“I will never forgive you.”_

With that, the mindscape dissolved into voices and screaming and tears and _pain._

(The time is 2:30 AM. Twenty four hours have passed since Remus Sanders was murdered and everything fell apart.)

**Author's Note:**

> unsympathetic side(s) for those who came from the beginning notes: logan and patton, though patton isn't acting out of Genuine Malice and logan has exactly One line after he's revealed as the killer, so do with that as you will
> 
> * * *
> 
> aaanyway if u want a happy ending just pretend remus sits up in the next five seconds and logan berates thomas for not figuring out his littol mental puzzle sooner :)
> 
> (comments and whatnot are Highly Appreciated :D)
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/ratherstareyed) || [tumblr](ratherstarryeyed.tumblr.com) || [tumblr post](https://ratherstarryeyed.tumblr.com/post/626262523369455616/falling-victim-to-your-fantasy)


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